A young Clare man has been sentenced to six years in prison for beating his 17-year-old sister to death with a hammer.
In April this year, Patrick O'Dwyer (21) Shrohill, Ennistymon, Co Clare, was the first person to be convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility since new laws governing insanity came into effect last year.
He had pleaded not guilty to murdering his sister at the family home on November 29th, 2004.
A jury accepted the defence evidence that he was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the killing which substantially diminished his responsibility for the crime.
Defence psychiatrists gave evidence that O'Dwyer suffered from a mental disorder called "depersonalisation disorder". Its symptoms included detachment or estrangement from oneself, sensory anaesthesia, a lack of effective response and a lack of emotional response.
In her victim impact statement, Mr O'Dwyer's mother Claire asked the judge not to send her son to jail.
However, Mr Justice Paul Carney, sitting at the Central Criminal Court, referred to a judgment in a similar case: "Diminished responsibility means exactly what it says; it reduces it, but does not extinguish it."
He said he took into account O'Dywer's display of remorse and that he had no previous convictions. He backdated the sentence to November 30th, 2004.
In her victim impact statement Ms O'Dwyer said: "Pa had no control over the events of that night but he has to spend the rest of his life knowing that he killed his sister." She described her daughter as kind, caring and intelligent girl who never judged anybody.
"She liked to help people out whenever she could. They were like two peas in a pod," she said,
"We love Pa very much and we will do absolutely everything we can for him to help him get on with the rest of his life."
She said she did not know what that was right now, but insisted the family "do think that maybe a prison sentence isn't the best place for him. We'll never have closure until we close our eyes for the last time."
Earlier, Mr Justice Carney asked Stephen Coughlan SC, prosecuting, to get instructions from the Director of Public Prosecutions as to the sentence he deemed fit. He said he found it "totally unacceptable" for the DPP to say to him "whatever you're having yourself" and then go behind his back "in another place and criticise this court".
He said he did not expect the DPP to tell him the exact sentence, but he wanted to know whether a suspended sentence "was on or not" and what the other options were.
He wanted the DPP to tell him whether it thought it fitted into the top, middle or bottom end of the manslaughter range.
When Mr Coughlan returned, he told Mr Justice Carney that were it not for the defence of diminished responsibility, the DPP would consider the killing on the "top end" of the range of manslaughter cases.
He said it was the director's view that it was for Mr Justice Carney to assess the degree to which the defence of diminished responsibility brought the offence down the scales of the hierarchy of manslaughter cases.
During the trial, Sgt Brian Howard told the court that on the day of the killing, O'Dwyer went to work as usual as a butcher's apprentice. He was still very tired from an extremely drunken night on the Saturday, when his sister had a party as their parents were on holidays.
He was deeply embarrassed because he had gotten sick and fallen and his friends had to put him to bed. He told gardaí that while at work he began "drifting" into another world.
When he got home that evening, his sister had made his dinner and they spoke with their parents on the phone.
Marguerite put the fire on in the living-room and they watched TV comedies together until halfway through The Office, when he went into the kitchen and picked up a hammer.
Depressed and overcome with feelings of profound shame and embarrassment, he told gardaí he planned to bash his own brains out.
However, when he saw Marguerite, he feared she would prevent him from doing so and was taken over by a feeling of being in a movie. He told psychiatrists "it was like watching a video" which he was not able to turn off.
As he approached her, she looked up at him and smiled. He said she must have thought he was joking, as he often messed around with her with a hurley.
The six blows from the hammer were described by State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy as "fatal and irrecoverable".
O'Dwyer then went into the kitchen, picked up a scissors and a knife and stabbed his sister 90 times in the neck, trunk and legs.